SDCC 2017: Netflix’s ‘Bright’ Panel Highlights

One of the highlights of San Diego Comic Con 2017 for me was the chance to attend the Hall H Panel for Netflix’s upcoming movie, ‘Bright,’ a panel which was hosted by Terry Cruz, and included director David Ayer, producers Eric Newman and Bryan Unkeless, and stars Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace, Edgar Ramirez, and Lucy Fry. The event was especially important as it was Netflix’s first time having a big panel in Hall H at San Diego Comic Con, and you could definitely feel the excitement in the crowd to have the streaming giant there showing off their latest movie offering, starring arguably one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

The panel, of course, included a brand new trailer for ‘Bright’ which the cast, in particular, was very excited about as they had to yet to see the new trailer, and then delved into a lot of discussion about how shooting a Netflix movie felt different from a standard studio film nowadays.

‘Bright’ was a unique case because of David Ayer taking on the project. His own unique directing style, combined with the fact that Netflix let them actually shoot the film in Los Angeles, lent to the gritty tone of the fantasy film, which sets out to fuse the dark tone of a crime drama with classic aspects of fantasy. Smith told the crowd the film had a lot of “grit and hard Rated R grime mashed up with ‘Lord of the Rings,” which is definitely what it feels like. When they use the words “magic wand” in the trailer, you feel goosebumps in the room at seeing these gritty cops (even if one of them is an orc) suddenly dealing with something so steeped in the fantastic.

Smith spoke about his excitement for the film, and how much he enjoyed working with Joel Edgerton, who blended right into the role of the orc police officer he was playing. Later, he jokingly talked about one of the more interesting aspects of playing a cop in the world of ‘Bright’ alongside Edgerton’s orc character, saying it was:

“…Great to be an African American police officer and find someone else to be racist against.”

We were also treated to a clip from the film where Smith, Edgerton, and Fry’s character’s are on the run from Noomi Rapace’s elf character, a scene which was prefaced with Smith talking about how dangerous the elves were, and how you did not want to be around if they got mad. The clip was insane with the action and violence as Rapace and her gang tried to take down Smith’s band within a small convenience store at a gas station, all to get back the aforementioned magic wand. The brief footage gave me a lot of hope that they truly are not going to pull any punches in this movie, and it might be the gritty fantasy movie Ayer has promised.

Check out the new trailer for yourself below (you know it is good as Smith himself requested the trailer to be played again at the end of the panel so he could get another look at it), and make sure to share your thoughts on ‘Bright’ in the comments below!

Nicholas Graff

A Southern California native (which seems to be a rarity as everyone seems to migrate here from outside the state, and everyone else born here ends up leaving for less crowded spaces), but for Nick, he loves it here. Nick has been writing since he was a teenager, self-published his first book trilogy, 'The Legacy of the Roras' back in 2011, and in 2014 published the inaugural issue of his first comic book, 'The Shadow of Aquaterra.' While not working on my own projects, he is working as a technical film editor at a major television network in their digital media division and recently began writing news and recap articles for ScienceFiction.com, a position which he has found extremely rewarding.